Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Banana Flower Recipe

Banana is very tasty and healthy fruit but banana flower is treated as a vegetable. This vegetable is frequently used in many countries like India, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma and China. The use of banana flower is not new in India and Thailand rather they have been cooking it for many centuries as a vegetable. If you like fishy taste, go for it and savor this taste by cooking banana flower. This is not the only way of cooking banana flower rather you can cook it in many ways by changing the ingredients and the method. You can add few more and delete some previous ingredients. In winter season, you can even prepare alluring banana flower soup.
A single banana flower offers good quantity of iron, magnesium and potassium that makes it healthy food. One flower of banana is sufficient for three people only. If you want to prepare for more people, add one more flower increasing other ingredient also.

Preparing Banana Flower
Before cooking the banana flower, there is a need to prepare it for cooking. You can see the outer petals of flower that are dark maroon, do not add them into dish or else they will cause bitter taste. Therefore, remove the first two rows of petals and put them aside. You can use these petals for serving afterwards. Now, you will find another row of petals of yellow color; remove them also and save them. Take a sharpen knife and cut the stem of flower. Cut the rest of the flower into small pieces. Pour all these slices into salty water mixture in which lime juice is also added. Leave the chopped flower in this water for an hour then rinse it and let it completely dry.

Ingredients

Banana flower (one, ripen)

Diced coconut (half cup, fresh)

Tamarind paste or sauce (one cup, thick)

Onion (one)

Yogurt (one cup)

Garam masala (one teaspoon)

Green chilies (two in number, chopped)

Garlic (two cloves)

Oil (for frying)

Ginger (one and half inch piece, peeled and diced)

Lime (one, juice)

Tamarind (quarter teaspoon)

Green chilies (two in number, chopped)

Salt (according to taste)

Cilantro (fresh, finely chopped, use for garnishing)

Cooking Method

Grind all the masala and mix together chilies, garlic, ginger, tumeric and garam masala.

Take a heavy saucepan and heat the oil in it on slow flam. When the oil starts to give smoke, it means it is heated and you should add the masala that you have blended well. Stir it after two or three sec and keep on stirring till masala leaves the oil.

Your masala is ready so add banana flower and chopped onion to coat the masala on them. Add tamarind sauce and half cup water and let it boil for five minutes.

After five minutes, add lime juice, salt and coconut and let it boil for further 15 minutes.

Your dish is ready. Serve it in the removed petals of banana flower. Pour one table spoon yogurt and sprinkle cilantro.